A belated Happy Feast day to you all. I have just been too busy to post until today with all the extra singing practice. Peter really was great, he taught us so much and gave so much of himself, we are richer for it and give him thanks.

Fridays feast day was also a big day for Sr Mary Magdelen – it was the anniversary of her Clothing as a novice and the completion of her canonical year. Please keep her in your prayers as her journey here continues. We kept the day with a wonderful high Mass – lots of great music from Peter, then later had a festive recreation tea in the work room, but the day was very simple really.

In the last week our garden has burst out all over again. I have been on my hands and knees weeding the beetroot. Joan and i planted it some time ago and oh my!, what a mess we made of the lines. I keep finding beetroot way off the straight and narrow – the ‘line ‘is very haphazard and all over the place. I think i have missed a lot in my weeding. We planted yellow beetroot for the fist time, this is really very hardy and doing well despite the weeds. I got quite a surprise seeing what a garish yellow it is, It is the colour of a childs’ crayons and looks just as unrealistic – nature is so funny and great.

More beans are coming up, the tomatoes are ripening faster than we can eat them so last week i made a pasta bake using lots of our own soft, fresh tomatoes instead of some from a tin. I have never been able to do this before – too expensive – but here with such abundance I have to or they will go to waste. God has been very generous this year – and the sauce tasted great. We have been eating lots of fresh cabbage and lettuce and had the first potatoes on the Feast day – they haven’t done so well though. Blackcurrants are ripening fast.

It’s strange but I can really feel that the year has turned. After an early spring and summer it now feels that we are in Autumn already. Some of the leaves are beginning to fall, the evenings are getting cooler and the night is closing in earlier even though the Summer blossoms are still about. It is a transitional time somehow, almost like a juxta-position of the two seasons. Autumn will win this one though and take over – soon at this rate. Living in the countryside I am much more aware of the cycles of nature with its birth, youth, parenthood and adulthood, old age and finally death – from seed to blossom to withering and dying – and the way everthing is interconnected, everything has it’s place and its reason for being – including us – no one and nothing exists in isolation. The changing seasons re- inforce all this too, It is very powerful, deeply contemplative and pesonally leads me to see our Creator more clearly – i gaze on creation and find my gaze moves on and sometimes gets a glimpse beyond it, to the great mind and love we call God.

Oh, I’m off on one again so it’s time to leave you. peace and blessings in Christ, Sr Marie-Therese.